 think tech Hawaii, the middle way, we're having a creative experience here at 10 o'clock in the morning in Honolulu on a given Monday. And we have our regular contributor, Chiang Wang and a special guest, Jonathan Feinberg. Jonathan Feinberg is a, I guess he's an art historian and a critic of contemporary art. And well, that's just a very limited introduction. So Chiang Wang is going to give him a fuller introduction. And Chiang, try to keep it to an hour and a half, will you? Oh, well, that's a good start and an hour and a half that will not be enough because Professor Feinberg has probably more than 30 books. And his career has been more than half a century. 21 years ago, I became Professor Feinberg's master student, a graduate student master program at the University of Illinois, 21 years ago. Oh my God, and he was there at that time, right? And Professor Feinberg and his wife, Marianne Feinberg hosted a family dinner upon my arrival. And for the next three years, I spent numerous time with Professor and studying American art, contemporary art and modern art. Professor Feinberg, in my view, is the best art historian in the United States. He's not only art historian, but he's also a critic of the reader. And the most important thing, he's a very prominent art educator, have educated thousands of thousands of art students around the world. In 2015, I had a great honor and privilege to host Professor Feinberg's first China visit and with my Omar Tarpe in film academy. 2005. 2005. 2005, I can't believe it. That's all my time just flies. So that was many, many years ago. And it seems that even before that, Professor Feinberg has written about Chinese contemporary art in his masterpiece, Art Since 1940, the Universal Textbook on Contemporary Art. And after that, I think Professor Feinberg had built very strong relationship with the art community in China and befriended with many, many leading and prominent Chinese artists. And most importantly, Zhang Xiaodong. And I will leave these two professors to you tell us about his friendship with Zhang Xiaodong and his very important book about Zhang Xiaodong. But I know this an hour and half is not enough, but I know my time is limited. I will just leave this back to you, Jay. Oh, thank you, Jay. So, Professor, what would you like to correct or add to from that introduction? Do you want to express any rebuttal? Well, first, I want to say I wish my mother was alive to have heard it. Secondly, I want to say, you know, that my first trip to China was in 2005. And and it was really because, you know, because of Cheng Wen, who had been saying to me, you have to come visit China. And finally, when I, you know, and I'm sure he probably arranges, I don't know if this is true or not. But I think that he probably was behind the fact that I got an invitation from the Beijing Film Academy to show a film on 20th century American art that I had just done for PBS in the US. So I thought to myself, boy, I'm I'm definitely going and Marianne and I got on a plane and went and and Wang Chang and his wife came with us. And he went every took us everywhere. We saw so many things and we he translated for us everywhere we went. I mean, if it weren't for him, I probably never would have gotten any of this. But we between us, we I remember after showing the film for which he translated the subtitles, I came out and I found that my arts in 1940 book was translated into Chinese and was in huge stacks out in front of the lecture hall being sold. I had I had no knowledge of this and I was very happy. And it turned out that that because there really isn't a lot to read all the all the contemporary artists had read it. So and we were taken out by the president of the Academy to a very fancy dinner. And at the end of the dinner, he said to me, I'm leaving town for for for a week. Why don't you just take my car and driver for a week? So I thought, well, that's pretty hard to turn down. And between between that and the fact that the the Zhang and Meng, his his wife, Meng Teng, came with us and translated for us. And I just made a list of every prominent, interesting, sounding Chinese artists, contemporary artists, like a thinker who lived in Beijing. And we went to every studio I I could. And it was and it was a very it was very intense. And I we got some help also from Long Lin, who runs Pace Beijing or was running Pace Beijing, the dealer there, who knew everybody. And and I just immediately became very much involved with the Chinese arts team, which was was and is active. These are great, great artists who Americans just know almost nothing about. So that's how that got started. But it really is a thanks to one drum that I got anywhere with that. You know, I was there. I was there at the same time, actually, Jonathan, I was I was in my second trip to China was right around then. And we were staying in a hotel directly. You must know this place, Chang, directly across the hall of the people is huge square. Everything is huge in China. I want to say the Beijing Hotel. What was it? You're right. Beijing Hotel. And in the in the Beijing Hotel, the entire lobby, which was very large, was dedicated to an art exhibit. And I looked at the art and I was just astounded how good it was. It was really fabulous world class art, never seen a collection like that. So I can relate, at least as a as a novice, I can relate to your delight at seeing this quality of art in China when you were first exposed to it. So how did how did that work for you, though? Because you'd been studying art as an historian and a critic of contemporary art. And now you're faced with a whole new genre level of talent. And it sounds like you kind of did a little bit of a pivot and you, you know, you took you took it seriously and you you you wrapped your your artistic and art critic thinking around it. And it's been that way ever since. Am I right? Yeah, well, I mean, I've been pivoting my whole life because I never know enough. So what what happens? This will be on the final exam, by the way. Anybody watching this show is going to be on the final. But, you know, I did a book called Art Since 1940, Strategies of Big, which was the standard. There was a child was talking about this was the standard book for 25 years. And and I updated it about every five years because it's art since 1940, which means there's always new things happening. And I'm always trying to catch up to what, you know, where the last play landed, basically. And at a certain point, actually, very recently, I took it out of print because I wanted to redo that as a three volume 20th century. And I've been thinking about the problem, you know, of our perspective on this. So the first part of it is really focused on Europe and America as and the tradition of the avant-garde, which was exclusive to Europe and America. And then from about 1914 to 1970, you have the kind of a pathiosis of this, but you suddenly begin to get the influence of other cultures in this. First, people didn't realize how many other cultures are in America. And that was one of the revelations of the first part of this. But after 1970, it became a global issue and the avant-garde in a way became moved. And so and I'm really rethinking that right now as I do this last volume of that three volume book, which would have otherwise been the update of the art 1940 will now be a 20th century article. But you know, it's made me think a lot about, you know, how our frame of reference has changed. And certainly one of the things that impacted that was seeing this Chinese art because I realized that from about 1980, when the very first graduates of the reopened art academies in China after the Cultural Revolution, there was a generation of artists who have been waiting for 10 years to get into an art school and they were already very competitive. So the kind of level of students that they had was extraordinary. And there's brilliant people came out of that and they in a way engendered a whole Chinese art scene and it was like I felt like I was watching the Italian Renaissance unfold because there were so many talented people and of Dutch height quality and they were so well informed and well read. And it was just it was a revelation and I continue to be fascinated by what they do. Well, let me let me take a moment and ask a China question, you know, what does art mean to the people in China? I'm going to ask you what it means to the people in the United States and a little while, Jonathan, what does it mean to the people in China? I mean, I'm thinking of Ai Weiwei, an artist, right? But he's also a political person. Is there a connection? Is it popular? What do people, you know, do people make the connection? Do they see it as a political statement or do they see it in some other way? Is it is inherent inherent in the Chinese culture? Well, let me respond. It's a very profound question and require a very complicated answer. But let me respond to you by saying that Ai Weiwei is probably the most well known Chinese artist in the world, but at least known Chinese artist in China thought of political activities. So he's not very well known in China. But to answer the main part of your question, what does art mean to Chinese people? And art today is a profession, is an industry, is a discipline, is highly specialized and professionalized you know, arena. So they are the lazy people understanding of art, which means, you know, something they can appreciate, something they can go to a museum and to see it and or something they read from a textbook, the about, you know, the traditional Chinese art history, things like that. But there are a separate, if you made a separate work of the art work, that means the art historian and critics like Professor Bamberg, the creators and the pretty active artists. Those people formed a kind of separate community from the rest of the lay people. And they are, they have, they are certain rules and there are certain protocols in this community. You know, I'm looking at the screen behind you in your room, there in your office, what the case may be. And I'm saying that's, you know, traditional Chinese screenpainting. That's actually Japanese. Japanese, OK. Japanese, but this is what I call, this is what I call. My point is that what I saw in the Beijing hotel, completely different, completely different. And, you know, it wasn't traditional at all. It was modern art. It was exact. Let me go back to Jonathan for a moment. Jonathan, the people in the United States, you know, in the culture, call it the culture, which everybody's been studying the last few years, examining the culture of the United States, where does art fit in it? And is it in an appropriate place for the, you know, the citizens of the United States to appreciate it? Or have we not given it enough attention? You know, works of art are, first of all, every artist is different. And I don't even think, you know, we think we look at Chinese art and it's a it's a collection of extraordinary individuals. But I wouldn't say that there's one relation that that in China they have to their own people in their own art. You know, Ai Weiwei is, of course, very famous here. But, you know, you don't look at Ai Weiwei because of the character, the object so much as his political acumen and his his kind of brilliance that characterizing that relationship. You know, some of the other artists and, of course, as a result of that, the Chinese government wants nothing to do with it. But the but the other artists like Jiang Zhaogang is not so overtly political. And he is very well known in China. Don't you think, I mean, he's he's very famous in China. And and he is, to my mind, I would say he's China's greatest painter right now. But there are others also of extraordinary quality. And, you know, what's interesting about a work of art ultimately is that it's a it's a way of mediating your experience of reality. And, you know, it's always changing, you know, the definition of art. Nobody's ever been able to come up with a definition of art because it's always changing. It's always about it's always. It's the totality of everything that we think is art. And that's constantly evolving because society and problems are evolving. And we need a way to to organize our relationship to you know, I'll tell you, I think it's always I love the the the idea of the metaphor of a marriage because, you know, when when you marry somebody, you fall in love with somebody, it's very disorganized. You know, you have somebody else suddenly coming in, coming into your very private spaces of your life, doing things in that space that are sometimes quite disconcerting. And you put up with it because you love them and there's so many gratifications in the relationship. But you're you're being disorganized and you're being reorganized. Have you been talking to my wife, you know? Jonathan, what now you've been writing about creativity. You've taken this, you know, from art, you know, criticism and the study of contemporary art to creativity. This is really important. One of the shows we do here on Think Tech is the American Creativity Association, believe it or not, out of Texas. But I just wonder, you know, why you did that and what it means to you and how it differs from, you know, your I guess your initial phase in this business as an art historian and critic. Well, I've always been interested in this problem because I think that a great work of art disorganizes you like a relationship. You know, if you really are moved by it, it's a little disturbing. And at the same time, it gives you an opportunity with no consequences to reorganize yourself. And you're reorganizing yourself in relation to an artist's experience of reality, which is usually very sharp. And so that's why I'm so interested in Christo. He's another artist who does this, you know, if you want to put up one of those, why don't you put up a couple of those pictures? Yeah, let's go through a picture show here. So we'll take. OK, you tell us what these are now, Jonathan. OK, so that's an early. That's one of Christo's very early styles of work. He just started wrapping, packaging things and you have no idea what's inside it for mystery. It looks very ordinary. You first look at and you think it's not a work of art at all, which is, of course, every great work of art begins as not being art until it redefines the concept of art to include itself. And that's what the avant-garde tradition is all about. But go to go to the next Christo. Let's see what else you've got there. So that's a project that he did in just a couple of years ago. The last project he finished before or one of the last projects he finished before he died. That was 2016. And he he he built a walkway that goes across like Isio in Italy. So you're walking across water. And it's a long walk from the from the mainland to these islands, which are otherwise inaccessible, except by boat. And he he put this up only for for two weeks. And it cost millions of dollars, all of which he raised from the sale of his drawings. It pays for everything himself because it's all about being free as an artist. And one of the things it does is it makes you you're in this. And you're having this real experience in reality. And it makes you rethink everything that you're seeing, including everything you are and you do. And that's the works of art do they give you this opportunity to kind of rethink your your your way of organizing yourself in relation to reality. So that was an amazing project because you you walk over that and you can feel the water. And you know, it was just it was one of the most inspiring things. Do what else is on there for Christmas? There's no other crystal. There's one that he did in Miami. That was that was in 1983. He was called the Surrounded Island. And he went into a Biscayne Bay in Miami and he put a 250 foot wide skirt around 11 of the 14 islands in the Biscayne Bay. Again, only for two weeks because once, you know, once it's been up for a while, he takes it away. So you have to imagine it. And the reality of it is what's in your mind. It's not what's in the, you know, what's actually physically there. You don't want to get he doesn't want it to be reified. So but there again, you know, it's all about the reality of the situation, you know, the colors are very much inspired by the real the real environment. Everybody's having to do their job, you know, the marine patrol is still patrolling the bay and directing traffic. But now they're doing it in relation to this completely irrational thing. And it makes them think about it again. And when that was up, I went around interviewing all these people and I had amazing conversations with these people. You know, one of the marine patrol guys said to me, you know, I've been patrolling Biscayne Bay on a boat for years and on the weekend, the holiday weekends, you know, we have all these accidents and disaster. And he said there's more traffic out looking at this project right now than any holiday I've ever patrolled. And there hasn't been a single accident. So, you know, let me let me take a moment and make myself an observer of this. So I see this and I see this pink pink, of course. Flamingo pink color that has something to do with Florida. And and it's it's it's around the island. So you say this makes you think now, I'm not a sophisticated art, you know, art person. But what it makes me think is, you know, it's like a soup. It's like there's it's sorry. It's maybe borscht, kind of a pink colored borscht. And it makes me think of the water and this island is special. But why is the artist doing this? What is he trying to tell me? And I suppose I would come up with some ideas about what he might be conveying. Is this the right approach? Sure, sure. I mean, I think that everybody, you know, there. It's like John Cage said about the first event that he organized at Black Mountain College. And I think he said every seat is the best seat because it's your seat. And, you know, and the point with this is that this will go away. But, you know, no matter how you experience this, and Christo said this, you know, it doesn't matter whether you see this in a book in the library in Denver or whether you actually were there and watched it happen or you saw it in television. Everybody has a reality of this project in their head. And it's their experience of it that really matters. And it's what it does in terms of their relationship to reality. How do you how do you rate this? In other words, if everyone has a different view of it, a different reaction to it, a different kind of set of questions about it. How do you rate a good piece of our contemporary art against the not so good piece? What's the metric? Is there a metric? I'm really asking you about art criticism. Right. So the metric for me would be how much how much did it affect how many people? And I think that, you know, when you think about that project we were just looking at in Miami, I mean, there's probably other go ahead and see if one of the pictures are in there. Let's see some others. We can put them in the same context. Yeah, there's another one of I think of the poem of repair. Oh, this one, so this one right now is about to happen. September 18th will be the last crystal project that he's completely organized himself. His studio is going to put it up. He's going to wrap the Arc de Triomphe from Paris for two weeks. And that's what you're seeing as a collage that he made. And in each case, you know. Well, I think about the I was thinking about the Marine patrol guy. But another conversation I had in Miami with somebody was I went to a little Havana one night for dinner while the project was up and I said to the waiter and I said, did you go see the project? And he said, no, he put his thumbs down and he said, no, good. And I said, really, did you see it? And he said, no, I didn't see it. But my son went over there, drove over the causeway and he said he couldn't see anything. And I said, well, I said, well, did you see it on television? Because it was on the front page of newspapers all over the world. It was on the Mount Miami Herald was on the front page every day for a week. It was on television. And he said, so I said, did you see it on television in his face lit up? He said, oh, yeah, it was fantastic. And it was like we were talking about two different completely different reality. And, you know, with the with this Arctic tree on thought, you know, I started to talk about the about them. That project in Italy, you know, which was the floating piers was in the middle of nowhere. It was 100 degrees heat and 1.2 million people found their way to come see that in the first week. And this project, I bet you're going to have three million people show up. And is it is it because I mean, there's got to be a factor of public relations in this too. Is it because they are, you know, curious and because it provokes them because they have lots of questions about it. They want to make some some sense out of it. And or is it also a function of seeing it on the front page of hearing critics talk about it of seeing public public relations campaigns about it. Both factors, I'm sure, are at play, but how do they work together? All of all of the above and more. So, you know, that's absolutely right. But I mean, they don't. Crystal never engaged public relations. It was just people reported on them and talked about them and experienced them in different ways. And in order to get them built, he would do a drawing like I just showed you for the for the Arctic Fiona and it looks so real. You look at it and you feel like he's really going to do this. And that fills the momentum in people's minds. And then they start talking about that momentum carries it forward. And when you start to think about the fact that in Paris, you've engaged, you know, three million people in the building of a work of art. What other work of art does that mean? You got three million people who are so curious about this. And so and I want to come see it. And and when it's gone, they remember it. And there's conversations that go on forever about it. So that's very important. And I'll tell you what, my my model there, really, when I was a student, when I was a college student, one of the one of my professors was a man named Eric Erickson. I don't know if you know who he was. But he was a cycle analyst who wrote a book called Gandhi's Truth. And he wrote Young Man Luther and other books. And what he what he said is that Gandhi and these other people thought were people with with psychological issues that they sorted out in a dynamic way. But they did it in public. And their issues were enough related to other people that they became ideology. So, you know, Gandhi became the founder of a new nation. But in one sense, bounding a problem for himself that everybody could relate to. And I think that's what that's one of the models for a great work of art. A lot in that. Can we we only have a few minutes left. Can we talk a little about the Art Museum of Philadelphia? Let's put a picture of the front of it up. So what is it? And how does it bear on the scene and exactly why did you select that place to do your work? Well, the I have studied psychoanalysis and I began to study neuroscience because I really want to understand what happened in the brain when creativity takes place. And I think I got to the place where I could actually teach it. Because I understood enough about the dynamics. And just at that point, I wrote a book called modernize the border of mind and brain. And I was asked by the National Academies of Science and Engineering and Medicine to talk about that last chapter. And I met a guy there who was who I thought was brilliant. We had this wonderful conversation. I had no idea who it was. And I happened to say to him, you know, I retired from the border of the trustees, the Phillips and the University of Illinois, all these things. I'm going to move. I don't know where I'm going to go. You know, my age, I better do it now if I'm going to do it. So he said, well, and I said, I'm thinking about Philadelphia. So well, that's really funny because I've just been appointed the new president of the University of the Arts. Why don't you come and have dinner with me if you're coming to look at real estate? So we get there and over dinner, basically, he said, you describe the process of being able to teach creativity. I'm I'm I'm the new president here. This is an art school. And what we really are interested in is advancing human creativity. He rewrote the mission statements for the university is simply advancing human creativity. So why don't you create a PhD program for me that does that? So that's how I ended up here. Oh, that's great. What a great life. You know, have you made have you made tons of money in trading art? Oh, never. That worries I fall within the job description of a critic and an historian. You go up to 57th Street of Manhattan and buy and sell expensive art. Well, my problem is that, you know, I I'm given often great things and sometimes I've even bought a few things, but I can never sell them. I can't I can't work with them. And so that's my problem. I'll never get that because of that. So what's your advice to people in general? I I would limit it to students, but I don't think I should limit it. What what is your advice to people in general about how to relate the art, how to have that special trends and dental experience with art to enrich their lives? You know, you just want to have an open mind again. It's like meeting somebody, having a relationship. You're looking at you go go into the museum and find that one thing that speaks to you and really look at it, you know, and ask yourself, you know, what what is the list? I think your reaction to that project is perfectly that's the way to go. You know, you ask yourself, how do you feel about this? What does it remind you of? Where does it take you? What is, you know, what's challenging about it? What what don't you like? Because often what you don't like turns out to be the most important thing. China, let's let's go to you for a minute now. Now it's clear to me from this brief discussion that Jonathan Feinberg's life has been affected by the gift you gave him of things Chinese. But my question is the other way around now. After all these years, you still know each other. You still relate and you still observe the work of the other and so forth. How has Jonathan Feinberg's work and your relationship with him changed your life? Everything. And let me first correct you that to. I took the credit to to host the perfect family, one of his visits to China. But that is just a small part of his entire China adventure. And definitely a smaller part of this very broad academic war. But. How about Professor Feinberg's influence on me? Is Professor Feinberg, you mentioned open mind, you mentioned creativity. And I have categorized people into two basic big categories. One category is people they don't know, they don't know. And you know what I'm talking about. And then another category is the people do know what we don't know. That's you, Jay, Professor Feinberg and me. But we for the second category, we keep the open mind and we keep trying to understand and learn the things we don't know. And we understand no matter how hard we try, there are still a lot of things we don't know. But that keeps us humble and it keeps us creative and it keeps us being open minded. That is the biggest thing I learned from Professor Feinberg over the past 21 years. And I look forward to continue to learn from him. Thank you, Jay. Thank you for introducing us to Jonathan Feinberg. And discussing this really interesting subject. And let me say that one thing I know, whether I do know that I know it or I don't know that I know it, is that we have only touched the surface of your life and study and what you teach. And Jonathan, I'm frustrated beyond description that we only scratch the surface. We can spend so much more time examining your work and your perception of things that I'm frustrated that we haven't done that. Maybe we should make sure to come back. We should come back and we should go much deeper, you know. I agree. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's wonderful to meet you, Jonathan. Thank you so much, Shang. I'll see you soon. Thank you, Professor. Okay. Take care. Bye-bye.